Mission Motors unbreaks our hearts, teases street-legal electric motorcycle
 

Filed under: EV/Plug-in, On Two Wheels, USA

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You know the feeling you get when the hottie you have a big crush on starts dating someone else, which breaks your heart, but then that relationship suddenly ends and your petit chou fleur is romantically-available again and your heart becomes unbroken? (Just indulge us and say, "Yes.") Well, that's kind of how we feel about the appearance of the above teaser from Mission Motors promising the most advanced, "highest performing street-legal electric vehicle ever made."
The Mission Motors story is packed with more twists and turns than any Californian canyon road. It burst onto the scene four years ago with the radically-designed, but super-powerful (and super-expensive) Mission One. A year later, it announced a production delay but the truth was, this design was dead, and the company would soon change its business model to one that focused on selling components to OEMs instead of motorcycles to the public. Our hearts were a little bit broken.

The startup then unveiled the fabulously-fabulous Mission R superbike and raced it in exactly one TTXGP event, where it won and set the EV-lap record at Laguna Seca (1:31.376, which stands to this day). Later, Mission fashioned the R into a street legal machine, handing it off to the likes of Jay Leno and the odd motorcycle journalist, and getting high marks for the two-wheeled effort. Still, no production plans were forthcoming.

Despite their successes, the company looked like it was in trouble last Fall as it laid off a significant number of staff - the end, it seemed, was near. Instead of final repose though, the San Francisco concern is jolting back to life. It started looking for new employees again back in February and this latest teaser would indicate that it's reversed its business-model reversal and is going back, at least in part, to its original plan of selling its own electric motorcycles.

When the lights come up on the promised production bike June 3rd, we expect to see a machine based on the Mission R, but featuring further refinement and, perhaps, higher performance. Truly, spring has returned, the dream is once again alive. Our hearts, they are unbroken.Mission Motors unbreaks our hearts, teases street-legal electric motorcycle originally appeared on AutoblogGreen on Wed, 08 May 2013 13:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.



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